In the News

Violence by Jewish settlers has been cited for the first time in a US state department list of "terrorist incidents", as Israeli political leaders condemned a string of recent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem. full article>

The pending order to demolish the small Palestinian village of Susiya in the southern Judean Mountains in the occupied West Bank represents a most blatant violation of human rights. The order calls for the forcible removal of several hundred Palestinians who have been living on their land from the time of the Ottoman Empire and still have the ownership deeds to prove their claim. full article>

Although the facts, the law, and admissions by Israeli government officials all pointed otherwise, during the July-August 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza, the Israeli government was successful in promoting its self-defense claim with western news media and in persuading certain U.S. politicians that Israel was implementing its right to defend itself. full article>

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - Two signs posted on the door of a nondescript dental office here asked passers-by to mourn the death of Cecil, a lion who was lured off his sanctuary and killed during a game hunt this month in Zimbabwe. full article>

Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test...consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

—Milan Kundera

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.

In early 1988, American farming was reaching a turning point. A small group of southwestern Wisconsin farmers—an improbable mix of back-to-the-land homesteaders (hippies!) and salt-of-the-earth family farmers—banded together to form a co-op to sell organic vegetables. Desperation does that. full article>

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

In May of 2015, St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office detectives initiated an animal cruelty investigation after receiving information that numerous dogs were housed in deplorable conditions in a residence in the 500 block of Greenwood Drive in LaPlace. Detectives obtained a judicial court authorized search warrant for the residence. full article>

North Charleston Police have made an arrest in the animal cruelty case that has been spread worldwide.William Leonard Dodson, 41, is being charged with ill treatment of animals and torture. He was found in the area of Quitman Street and Calvert Street. He is expected to be in bond court on Tuesday. full article>

If the neoconservatives have their way again, U.S. ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the U.S. military will take out Syria's secular government (likely helping Al Qaeda and the Islamic State take over), and the U.S. Congress will not only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending. full article>

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

Another row is brewing between Israel and the Palestinian Resistance Movement, Hamas, over the release of Avraham Mengitsu, an Israeli citizen who, according to Israeli military sources, 'slipped into Gaza' on September 7, 2014. full article>

When Senator Elizabeth Warren took the stage at Netroots Nation in Phoenix on Friday, many of the assembled activists hoped she would be coming to them as a presidential candidate—in fact, more than a few of them operated campaigns to convince her to run. full article>

In 1974, when she was only 14, Jackie Fuchs would wake up way before her parents and catch a ride with friends from her house in the San Fernando Valley across the Santa Monica Mountains and into Malibu. She'd hit the beach and paddle out in the quiet, pre-dawn dark. full article>

Omar Sharif, the Egyptian actor who rode out of the desert in the 1962 screen epic "Lawrence of Arabia" into a glamorous if brief reign as an international star in films like "Doctor Zhivago" and "The Night of the Generals," died on Friday in Cairo. He was 83. full article>

In the music community, we all take turns helping each other & have since the beginning. Punk rock and benefits always went hand in hand: you name the cause, and the bands and fans will be there.
Now it's our turn to help Billy Zoom,
the wittiest, smartest, nicest, best guitar player & friend I know. I would do anything to help him get better, help take care of his family, and lessen his woes. Billy has begun chemo treatment at Cedars Sinai for Bladder cancer. He has a long road ahead of him but we are confident he's beat cancer once and he'll do it again!

Please keep Billy in your prayers and send some positive energy his way!

Donating a few bucks will help take away some of his financial stress and worry.

Have fun, be safe, don't burn down the forest or your house, or anyone else's.

Perceval Press will be closed from 3-12 July.

The hardest thing I had to overcome in life? I think racism. That's so difficult because I don't think anyone can ever understand it. It's not that people don't want to understand it, but they don't want to touch it.

The American capacity to deny history might be heroic if it weren't so persistently in the direction of social repression. The port of Charleston, South Carolina was the major entry and distribution point for kidnapped Africans forced into slavery in the American colonies. Slaves built the city of Charleston and were the force that drove the colonial economy of South Carolina. By 1709 South Carolina had the first slave patrols in the colonies, self-appointed groups that policed the movements of Blacks. By 1837 the Charleston slave patrols became the first official municipal police department in the U.S. Today Charleston's role in the horrors of slavery has been sanitized through the storyline of the 'progress' of history. But with the blood of nine Black innocents freshly spilled, this history doesn't wash away so easily. full article>

The planet is entering a new period of extinction with top scientists warning that species all over the world are "essentially the walking dead" – including our own. full article>

And As It's Going

And as it's going often at love's breaking,
The ghost of first days came again to us,
The silver willow through window then stretched in,
The silver beauty of her gentle branches.
The bird began to sing the song of light and pleasure
To us, who fears to lift looks from the earth,
Who are so lofty, bitter and intense,
About days when we were saved together.

Consider this paragraph a holding action on the subject of getting blown away in America. While I write this dispatch, I'm waiting patiently for the next set of dispiriting killings in this country. And I have faith. Before I'm done, some angry -- or simply mentally disturbed -- and well-armed American "lone wolf" (or lone wolves) will gun down someone (or a number of people) somewhere and possibly himself (or themselves) as well. Count on that. It'll be my last paragraph. Think of it as, in a grim way, something to look forward to as you read this piece on American armed mayhem. full article>

I Murder Hate

I murder hate by flood or field,
Tho' glory's name may screen us;
In wars at home I'll spend my blood—
Life-giving wars of Venus.
The deities that I adore
Are social Peace and Plenty;
I'm better pleas'd to make one more,
Than be the death of twenty.

I would not die like Socrates,
For all the fuss of Plato;
Nor would I with Leonidas,
Nor yet would I with Cato:
The zealots of the Church and State
Shall ne'er my mortal foes be;
But let me have bold Zimri's fate,
Within the arms of Cozbi!

"With cat-like tread upon our foes we steal." So boasted Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance as they decided to try a little burglary for a change. And "steal" is the appropriate word. full article>

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination, has trouble being taken seriously by the corporate media, what with him being a democratic socialist and all. full article>

There's a lot of fuss on the Left about election irregularities, like, you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn't count the votes right, and so on. That's all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don't take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term 'election.'

In a highly anticipated papal letter released Thursday, Pope Francis called on Catholics worldwide to make safeguarding the environment and battling climate change an urgent and top priority of the 21st century. full article>

Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way.

Pope Francis has called on the world's rich nations to begin paying their "grave social debt" to the poor and take concrete steps on climate change, saying failure to do so presents an undeniable risk to a "common home" that is beginning to resemble a "pile of filth". full article>

The idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology ... is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth's goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit.

—Pope Francis

______________________

Dear Christopher,

It has been an honour to have spent time with you in this world. Not just acting together in New Zealand, but especially during those unforgettable sessions in your London home with your lovely wife Gitte. No matter what time of the day I came by, a nice glass of Danish aquavit was served, along with a good cigar or two. These were not needed to stimulate the illuminating conversations and humorous anecdotes you so generously shared, but they certainly were welcome treats. I'm so glad I got to know you a little, and will sorely miss your voice and your glittering gaze. I'll seek out recordings to accompany my memory of your singular, imposing presence and of that deeply melodious baritone known to millions the world over. Travel well and continue to rumble and shine, my friend.

Sir Christopher Lee, known as the master of horror, has died at the age of 93 after being hospitalised for respiratory problems and heart failure.

The veteran actor, immortalised in films from Dracula to The Wicker Man, and via James Bond villainy to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, died at 8.30am on Sunday morning at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. full article>

Reality doesn't exist until it's measured, at least for very small things, new research has found.

By replicating a famous experiment where an object is given a choice for how to behave, physicists found that the object doesn't actually make its decision until it is seen. The finding proves one of the central parts of quantum theory, a branch of science that has been applied to make much of our modern technology. full article>

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Joseph McVetty is an artist and illustrator living and working in Portland, Oregon. The masked participants of these drawings are acting out communal rituals involving new age occult signifiers such as crystals, chakras, energy fields, levitation, and conjuring. Each drawing aims to evoke the feelings associated with the cultish, drop-out supernaturalism, and homespun magic. full article>

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

On April 29, three adults and a child came across some fist-sized canisters on the ground outside of Baqim, a Yemeni town controlled by Houthi rebels. To the 10-year-old boy among them, they "looked like toys." Out of curiosity, they picked up the cannisters, which then exploded. All four were injured; a nurse told Human Rights Watch that the child was wounded in the stomach, and one of the adults received injuries to his face, torso, thigh, and crotch. Considering the kind of damage that cluster-bomb submunitions can cause, they're lucky to still be alive. full article>

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

Lia Tarachansky's heart-wrenching documentary, On the Side of the Road, reveals the Big Lie at the heart of the myth of the creation of Israel.

Tarachansky had to break through a lot of personal and social barriers to produce this often infuriating film about the Nakba, the "catastrophe" of 1948, when approximately 750,000 Palestinians (a number that has grown to 1.5 million refugees living in camps over the ensuing 67 years) were expelled from their homes and forced into squalid camps, where they are denied basic human rights. full article>

We say to the British government: you have kept those sculptures for almost two centuries. You have cared for them as well as you could, for which we thank you. But now in the name of fairness and morality, please give them back.

When the black-cowled gunmen of the 'Islamic State' infiltrated the suburbs of Palmyra on 20 May, half of Assad Sulieman's oil and gas processing plant crews – 50 men in all - were manning their 12-hour shift at the Hayan oil field 28 miles away. They were the lucky ones. Their 50 off-duty colleagues were sleeping at their homes next to the ancient Roman city. Twenty-five of them would soon be dead, among up to 400 civilians – including women and children – who would die in the coming hours at the hands of the Islamist militia which every Syrian now calls by its self-styled acronym 'Daesh'. full article>

The Obama administration's authority to collect Americans' phone records in bulk will likely expire next week after senators from both parties rejected attempts to extend it. First, the Republican-led Senate rejected a House-passed measure to curb bulk spying by keeping the records with phone companies instead of the government. The Senate then rejected a bid by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to extend the current bulk spying program for two months. The Senate adjourned and will reconvene May 31, the day before the program expires. In an exclusive interview from his place of refuge inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange weighs in on the NSA standoff. full article>

She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.

Last week, the latest quinquennial review conference for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) ended as a failure, without issuing a formal statement or report. The single biggest snag concerned whether to call for the convening of a conference on a Middle Eastern nuclear weapons free zone (MENWFZ). full article>

In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.

Last week, Jeb Bush stepped in it. It took the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate several attempts to answer the most obvious question: Knowing what we know now, would you have launched the Iraq War? Yes, I would have, he initially declared, noting he would not dump on his brother for initiating the unpopular war. full article>

Memorial Day is, by federal law, a day of prayer for permanent peace. But is it possible to honestly pray for peace while our country is far and away number one in the world in waging war, military presence, military spending and the sale of weapons around the world?

Permanent War

Since 1980 the US has engaged in aggressive military action in 14 countries in the Islamic world alone, according to research published in the Washington Post: Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria. In this hemisphere, US military forces invaded Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), and landed 20,000 military forces in Haiti (1994). full article>

In These Times - In early February, Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker drafted a draconian state budget that proposed to decrease the state's contribution to the University of Wisconsin system by over $300 million over the next two years. Beyond simply slashing spending, Walker was also attempting to alter the language that has guided the core mission of the University of Wisconsin over the last 100 years or more, known as the "Wisconsin Idea." Apparently Walker's ideal university would no longer "extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses" and would thus cease its "search for truth" and its efforts to "improve the human condition," as his proposed language changes scrapped these ideas entirely; the governor's scaled-back objective was for the university to merely "meet the state's workforce needs." full article>

Fox personalities criticized President Obama for calling climate change "an immediate risk to our national security" during his U.S. Coast Guard Academy commencement address. But security experts agree with the president that global climate change does threaten U.S. national security. full article>

When opportunity knocks, some people are in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers.

Jeb Bush has performed a valuable service with his recent missteps and flubs, he's reminded the world of the baggage he willingly carries. I'm not tarring him with the same brush as George W. Bush just because they are brothers. Jeb has voluntarily staffed his foreign policy team with 17 people from his brother's administration. (This is out of a foreign policy team of 21, mind you.) full article>

Ten million dollars a minute. According to the comprehensive account in The Guardian that broke the story of a new IMF study, $10 million a minute is how much the world's governments are spending to subsidize the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. That amounts to $5.3 trillion a year in taxpayer money that is intensifying climate change at the very time humanity needs to be reversing it. This $5.3 trillion is also contributing to millions of deaths, heart attacks, asthma cases, and other health effects of local air pollution in the United States and countries around the world. Through the wrongheaded policies of our political "leaders," we humans are subsidizing the digging of our own graves. full article>

American diplomacy favors (majority) white, English-speaking countries (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and non-Hispanic European settler states (Canada, Australia and New Zealand again, but also Apartheid South Africa and, of course, Israel). full article>

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

When mailman Doug Hughes delivered a powerful message to Congress in April, he drew saturation coverage from the mass media.

Not coverage of his message, mind you, but a ridiculous spasm of media scaremongering over the non-existent terrorist threat that our self-absorbed members of Congress say his visit posed to them. Hughes is the plucky rural letter carrier who piloted his little, one-person gyrocopter undetected through Washington's no-fly airspace, landing in Congress' front yard. He was "special-delivering" letters he'd composed to all 535 lawmakers, dramatically conveying to them that We the People are fed up with legislators who're routinely bought at auction by corporate powers. full article>

It's a rare and remarkable event when a government broadcasts ahead of time its intent to commit war crimes. Yet that's just what senior Israeli military officials recently did in the pages of The New York Times.

Israeli military officials gave friendly Times correspondent Isabel Kershner a provocative briefing, warning (in her words) that in the "almost inevitable next battle with Hezbollah . . . many Lebanese civilians will probably be killed, and that it should not be considered Israel's fault." full article>

I've never been keen on boycotts. The one against Italy for invading Abyssinia didn't work. Nor did the arms blockade on Spain. I'm still not sure that boycotting South Africa really brought down apartheid. I rather suspect that the old racists simply realised they were hopelessly outnumbered by the blacks of South Africa and that the game was up. full article>

After I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program in 2007, the fallout for me was brutal. To make a long story short, I served nearly two years in federal prison and then endured a few more months of house arrest. full article>

_______________________

Aged 28, but a timeless presence in the minds of those who had the honour of knowing this proud, handsome, and supremely intelligent being, mighty Uraeus has finally come to rest on the physical plane. Thank you, Jane and Ray, for helping him do so with dignity. Dearest friend and teacher, I hold you and keep you.

Sloan Projects is pleased to present The Dust of Sunlight: Exene Cervenka, Journals and Collage 1974-2015, curated by Kristine McKenna. On view June 6 through July 04, 2015. A reception for the artist and book signing will be held Saturday, June 6 from 5-8pm. more information>

On 17 April it was more than 70 degrees Fahrenheit in Ann Arbor. The daffodills were in full bloom. As usual on Wednesdays at the court house we were protesting the police shooting of Aura Roser last November and the prosecutor who refused to indict the policeman for that crime. Suddenly, such a racket of bird song poured out from the tree above us as a robin red breast sang his heart out and circled hysterically around a female! Spring had arrived at last. It has come so suddenly after an aching long winter. full article>

I tiptoed across the wood planks of a wobbly orange boat heading from the riverside town Kampot to the Gulf of Thailand. I burned my bare feet on the shiny outdoor tiles surrounding a Buddhist stupa at Udong, the old capital of Cambodia. Across the country, at the 11th-century ruins of Phnom Banan, I spelunked through deep, damp caverns steeped in legends of magic and superstition. All the way, I followed a Frenchman named Henri. For 16 years and more than 20 trips, he has led me through the heart of this beautiful but knotty country. full article>

The British General election was dramatic. On the superficial level because three party leaders- Miliband (Labour), Nick Clegg (Liberal-Democrat) and Nigel Farage (UKIP-a racist, right-wing populist outfit)...resigned on the day following the Conservative victory. On a more fundamental level because the Scottish National Party took virtually all the Scottish seats (56 of 59) wiping out Labour as a political force in the region where it had dominated politics for over a century. Scotland was where the Labour Party was founded. Scotland it was that gave Labour its first leaders and Prime Minster (as well as the last one). Scottish working class culture was in most cases much more radical than its English equivalent. full article>

Statistics are like lamp posts: they are good to lean on, but they don't shed much light.

—Storm P

Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.

Sometimes it seems that a major part of the U.S. role in the world is to assuage the anxieties, fears, and hurt feelings of other nations. Parents do this with children, and clinical psychologists do this with patients; should the world's superpower be expected to do this with foreign states? Evidently it is. This month, for example, there will be a summit meeting at Camp David with Gulf Arab states, and the purpose is summed up in the headline of a newspaper article about preparations for the meeting: the gathering is intended to "ease fears" of Arabs in connection with the agreement on limiting Iran's nuclear program. Such U.S. hand-holding with putative allies in the Middle East is not limited to matters related to the Iranian nuclear deal, and such salving of feelings is not limited to the Middle East. full article>

American presidents reverently end their speeches with the audience-approving Benediction, "God bless America." What they are really communicating is that God favors America. That, today, America is God's chosen people. Even more! They are equating America with God. Which— in the magical twinkle of a rationalizing mind's eye—means that America is God—white America, that is. As political leaders like to assert: America is today's embodiment of Jesus' teaching that "a city set on a hill cannot be hidden," and by inference, his followers, "are the light of the world." (Matthew 5: 14-16) With a "manifest destiny" that swept our white forefathers across the American continent, over the bones of indigenous people and on the backs of black persons forced into slavery—today's continuation of which includes a trail of bodies, citizens killed by police "while being black." full article>

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

—Carl Jung

Michael Blake, or "Rides Alone" as he sometimes referred to himself among friends, has left the building. He leaves a family and the many people who got to know and love him to keep sorting their way through the Big Mystery, as he called our shared existence on this earth. To the countless admirers he gained throughout the world for his novels, including Dances With Wolves and its very popular film adaptation from 1990, he is a singular voice in the Western and Native American story-telling genres. To defenders of the buffalo, the mountain lion, the wild horse, and other four-leggeds of North America he has long been a champion advocate. To those who knew him well, he was an eternal optimist who approached death smiling and unafraid, grateful for his time in the sun. To see him off with the kind of courage he showed us, we offer these two Lakota Ghost Dance songs:

Wana' yan ma' niye

Wana' yan ma' niye

Tatanka wan ma' niya

Tatanka wan ma' niya

Ate heye lo

Ate heye lo

Now he is walking

Now he is walking

There is a buffalo walking

There is a buffalo walking

Says the father

Says the father

------------------------

Miyelo

Miyelo

Miyelo

Tunkasila heya ca

Cewakiya ca namahun yelo

It is I

It is I

It is I

Grandfather says so

I pray to him and he hears me

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

They were brave Turks and they were brave Armenians, the descendants of the murderers of 1915 and the descendants of their victims.

They stood together outside the old Istanbul prison where the first 250 Armenians – intellectuals, lawyers, teachers, journalists – were imprisoned by the Ottoman Turks exactly 100 years ago, and they travelled across the Bosphorus to sit next to each other outside the gaunt pseudo-Gothic hulk of what was once the Anatolia Station. full article>

In disclosing the deaths of two Western hostages in a U.S. drone strike on an Al-Qaeda compound, President Barack Obama said on Thursday that he had ordered the declassification of the secret operation because "the United States is a democracy committed to openness in good times and in bad." full article>

And do you accept the idea that there is no explanation?

—Julio Cortazar

Australia Day Thought

First Nation people of this land
Belong to deserts and coastline sands

For millenniums of Dreamtime places
Respecting country with black faces

The second nation to reach these shores
On ships with flags to conquer all,

A third nation to cross the waves
Of migrants, refugees and slaves

Australia's first millennium
A nation built by British men

A nation with its mines and farms
A nation born from bearing arms

Australia's nation of today
Whose generations number 8?

Australians merge to form new moulds
200 years is not that old...

First nation Australians are still here today
No boats have taken us away

Australia has again declared war on its Indigenous people, reminiscent of the brutality that brought universal condemnation on apartheid South Africa. Aboriginal people are to be driven from homelands where their communities have lived for thousands of years. In Western Australia, where mining companies make billion dollar profits exploiting Aboriginal land, the state government says it can no longer afford to "support" the homelands. full article>

This year marks the centenary of that first bloody battle on the shores of Gallipoli and will be remembered across the country and in Turkey with special ceremonies and exhibitions. In the third feature in our series on Gallipoli, Saffron Howden for BBC News tells some of the stories of Indigenous Australian soldiers. full article>

55 million dollars. In sports terms that's not a great deal of money. It's a healthy NBA contract or the kind of deal a Major League Baseball team would hand to a quality third baseman. But in the real world as opposed to the sports world 55 million dollars is one hell of a stack. In governmental terms $55 million builds a new school. It reopens a public hospital. It repairs miles of roads. It saves lives. $55 million is also what the US Justice Department—mostly spent under Bush but finished under Obama—has wasted on what we can now officially call the failed prosecution of Barry Lamar Bonds. The Major League Baseball home run king, assumed steroid user and Hall of Fame pariah on Wednesday had the government's last thread holding him down—an obstruction of justice conviction—finally snipped on appeal. full article>

2015 marks 40 years since Morocco's invasion and occupation of Western Sahara. Poet Sam Berkson, recounts his experiences among the Saharawi refugees in Algeria, bringing back poems from the some of the Saharawi greats, translated for the first time into English. full article>

TIFARITI, Western Sahara — Ghalla Sid Ahmed and her mother eke out a living in this isolated desert settlement, subsisting on five goats and a war pension. For 40 years they have lived in exile, barred from their land by a heavily patrolled sand berm that runs like a scar for 1,600 miles through this remote corner of the Sahara. full article>

My first encounter with the Sahrawi-Moroccan conflict also happens to be one of the first and most striking memories of my life. Only three years after the ceasefire, I was four years old when my mother, my grandfather and grandmother were on a vacation in Merzouga, a small desert town in south-eastern Morocco just a few kilometers from the Algerian border. During our stay in Merzouga, my mother-- a fan of adventure, wanted to go off-roading in the desert. full article>

A benign online search for a map that outlines the geographical area between southern Morocco, southwestern Algeria, and the Western Sahara will yield a number of results. Some maps will have solid borders between Morocco, Algeria, and the Western Sahara; some will display a dotted line between Morocco and the Western Sahara; some will extend the borders of Morocco to the North of Mauritania, completely erasing the Western Sahara. The different variations of these maps can be read as geographical representations of the contentious political conceptions of the Western Saharan conflict. These maps, however, obscure the nuanced nature of this space, its tenuous borders, and mobility within and beyond them. full article>

The first part of this series examined Morocco's use of space and architecture to exert force and reify the regime's conception of the national borders in the south. The 1,600-mile sand berm Morocco constructed in the 1980s initially served to curtail the expansion and activities of the Polisario Front. While the armed conflict between the Moroccan army and the Polisario Front came to an end in 1991 after the signing of a treaty, the berm continued to exist and not only remains today, but is also reinforced with the presence of soldiers and an estimated seven million landmines. full article>

One longs for a candidate for president of the United States possessing those rare traits of statesmanship, honesty and integrity. One looks back in vain to see such an example, and the near and far horizons offer no such hope, either. full article>

Three decades ago, with the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the South American dictatorships, many hoped that the much talked about 'peace dividend' promised by Bush senior and Thatcher would actually materialise. No such luck. Instead, we have experienced continuous wars, upheavals, intolerance and fundamentalisms of every sort – religious, ethnic and imperial. The exposure of the Western world's surveillance networks has heightened the feeling that democratic institutions aren't functioning as they should, that, like it or not, we are living in the twilight period of democracy itself. full article>

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

The U.S.-backed Ukrainian government came up with a curious way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust being brought to an end. The parliament in Kiev voted to extend official recognition to Ukrainian fascists who collaborated with the Nazis in killing Jews. full article>

My dictionary defines a "staff" as a walking stick, used either for balance – or as a weapon.

So how are today's congressional staffs used? At one time, they were behind-the-scenes people hired to walk lawmakers through the complexities of legislation, or to help find some balance between competing viewpoints. These days, though, top staffers tend to be a specific type of high-profile operative: Corporate lobbyists. full article>

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

On April 1, an anti-Muslim advertisement started appearing on 84 municipal buses in the Philadelphia regional area. The ad space was purchased for a four-week period by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which paid $30,000 to run its message: a picture from the early 1940s of Adolf Hitler speaking to Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti (chief Muslim religious authority) of Jerusalem, with an accompanying text, "Islamic Jew Hatred: It's in the Quran" and a call to "end all aid to Islamic countries." full article>

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

It was a mild, crystal clear desert evening on November 15, 2004, when Jennifer Longdon and her fiance, David Rueckert, closed up his martial-arts studio and headed out to grab some carnitas tortas from a nearby taqueria. They were joking and chatting about wedding plans—the local Japanese garden seemed perfect—as Rueckert turned their pickup into the parking lot of a strip mall in suburban north Phoenix. A red truck with oversize tires and tinted windows sideswiped theirs, and as they stopped to get out, Rueckert's window exploded. He told Longdon to get down and reached for the handgun he had inside a cooler on the cab floor. As he threw the truck into gear, there were two more shots. His words turned to gibberish and he slumped forward, his foot on the gas. A bullet hit Longdon's back like a bolt of lightning, her whole body a live wire as they accelerated toward the row of palm trees in the concrete divider. full article>

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

The intensified public discussion about the root causes of violent extremism among some Muslims has focused mainly on the socio-economic and political conditions that exist in Arab countries and among Arab communities in Europe and the U.S., which provide a breeding ground for extremism. full article>

It is much easier to condemn Islam and 'oppressive Muslim men' than to unpack the intricate relationships between global politics related to empire building and capitalist expansion as well as regional and national struggles revolving around political and economic power and resources.

A few days ago I received a personalized letter from your Presidential Center that included a solicitation card for donations that actually provided words for my reply. They included "I'm honored to help tell the story of the Bush Presidency" and "I'm thrilled that the Bush Institute is advancing timeless principles and practical solutions to the challenges facing our world." (Below were categories of "tax deductible contributions" starting with $25 and going upward.)

Did you mean the "timeless principles" that drove you and Mr. Cheney to invade the country of Iraq, which, contrary to your fabrications, deceptions and cover-ups, never threatened the United States? Nor could Iraq, under its dictator and his dilapidated military, threaten its far more powerful neighbors, even if the Iraqi regime wanted to do so.

Today, Iraq remains a country (roughly the size and population of Texas) you destroyed, a country where over a million Iraqis, including many children and infants (remember Fallujah?) lost their lives, millions more were sickened or injured, and millions more were forced to become refugees, including most of the Iraqi Christians. Iraq is a country rife with sectarian strife that your prolonged invasion provoked into what is now open warfare. Iraq is a country where Al Qaeda is spreading with explosions taking twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or sixty lives per day. Just this week, it was reported that the US has sent Hellfire air-to-ground missiles to Iraq's air force to be used against encampments of "the country's branch of al-Qaeda." There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before your invasion. Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were mortal enemies.

The Bush/Cheney sociocide of Iraq, together with the loss of tens of thousands of US soldiers' lives, injuries and illnesses, registers, with the passage of time, no recognition by you that you did anything wrong, nor have you accepted responsibility for the illegality of your military actions without a congressional declaration of war. You even turned your back on Iraqis who worked with US military occupation forces as drivers, translators, etc. at great risk to themselves and their families and were desperately requesting visas to the US, often with the backing of US military personnel. Your administration allowed fewer Iraqis into the US than did Sweden in that same period and far, far fewer than Vietnamese refugees coming to the US during the 1970s.

When you were a candidate, I called you a corporation running for the presidency masquerading as a human being. In time you turned a metaphor into a reality. As a corporation, you express no remorse, no shame, no compassion and resistance admitting anything other than that you have done nothing wrong. full article>

As British and French imperialism ebbed following the end of the Second World War, America became the main outside player in Arab affairs.

Writer Mohsin Hamid's life has straddled three continents. His new collection of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches From Lahore, New York, and London, taps his uniquely internationalist perspective. full article>

Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capitalism is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

—Vladimir Iliych Lenin

Klaus Rifbjerg is gone for now. His extensive body of work as a novelist, poet, playwright, social commentator and in other fields of writing remains, as does his sharp wit and his gift with the Danish language, to remind us of his enormous contribution to Scandinavian culture during the last sixty years. One has to wonder why he never came close (as far as I know) to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. He would have certainly been more deserving, in my opinion, than some who have been given that award. These things are mysterious, however, and prizes certainly do not make an artist better or worse.

About thirty-five years ago I sent him a short novel I had written, and he was kind enough to reply with a hand-written letter of constructive criticism and encouragement. He certainly did not need to take the time and effort to read or comment on what was a very raw piece of writing by a twenty year-old. But that is the kind of person he was, someone who inspired and encouraged others. Recently, through the good agency of actress Ghita Nørby, Klaus agreed to help me with the translation into Danish of some of the dialogue originally written in Spanish by Fabián Casas and Lisandro Alonso for the movie "Jauja". He took the assignment on even though he was not well physically. For this last favour, but mostly for his life's work as one of Danish literature's greatest artists, I am most grateful. Wherever he goes, out of body and time, I'm sure he'll find a way to write more stories and poems. Maybe they will reach us one day in an unexpected gust of inspiration that blows through the mind of some unsuspecting, lucky author. Fortsat god rejse, Klaus!

b.1931, one of the principal figures in Danish post-war literature and cultural criticism, a rejuvenator especially of lyric poetry, in which he was a pioneer of Danish modernism at the beginning of the 1960s. full article>

George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society casts a dark shadow over the United States. The consequences can be seen clearly in the ongoing and ruthless assault on the social state, workers, unions, higher education, students, poor minorities and any vestige of the social contract. Free market policies, values, and practices with their emphasis on the privatization of public wealth, the elimination of social protections, and the deregulation of economic activity now shape practically every commanding political and economic institution in the United States. Public spheres that once offered at least the glimmer of progressive ideas, enlightened social policies, non-commodified values, and critical dialogue and exchange have been increasingly militarized-or replaced by private spaces and corporate settings whose ultimate fidelity is to increasing profit margins. Citizenship is now subsumed by the national security state and a cult of secrecy, organized and reinforced by the constant mobilization of fear and insecurity designed to produce a form of ethical tranquilization and a paralyzing level of social infantilism. full article>

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Sunday defended his decision to sign a religious freedom bill into law, saying that it was "absolutely not" a mistake.

In an interview on ABC's "This Week" the Republican governor repeatedly dodged questions on whether the law would legally allow people of Indiana to refuse service to gay and lesbians, saying that residents of the state are "nice" and don't discriminate and that "this is about protecting the religious liberty of people of faith and families of faith." full article>

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

The press has almost entirely ignored the revelation that after the "richest man in Wisconsin" made secret donations benefitting Republican Governor Scott Walker, his company received special tax credits for that same donor's company.

By contrast, the media have frequently invoked donations to the Clinton Foundation in their coverage of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, baselessly suggesting that those donations create conflicts of interest. full article>

On the 12th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, groups of physicians attempted to arrive at a partial answer to this question by counting the dead.

In their joint report— Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror—Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded that this number is staggering, with at least 1.3 million lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the onset of the war following September 11, 2001.

However, the report notes, this is a conservative estimate, and the total number killed in the three countries "could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely." full article>

No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.

—Susan B. Anthony

In Other Words

Nothing in life is to be feared.

It is only to be understood.

—MARIE CURIE

Nothing is easier than to

denounce the evildoer;

nothing is more difficult

than to understand him.

—FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

I do not study in order to know more, rather to be less ignorant.

—SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ

We must make haste then,

not only because we are daily

nearer to death, but also

because the conception of

things and the understanding

of them cease first.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

JUNE/JULY 2015

$4 MONTHLY SPECIAL

In our effort to publish and distribute texts that otherwise might not be presented we are offering a monthly book selection available for $4.

Minerva Chapman oil painting, we are looking to buy it in order to photograph it professionally for a book we are putting together about her art. If you would be willing to sell it, please contact us at:

Perceval Press is pleased to announce the release ofHIJOS DE LA SELVA/SONS OF THE FOREST. The book outlines the story of German Ethnographer and explorer Max Schmidt, and includes many of the remarkable photographs that he made in the field while studying the cultures of the Mato Grosso region of Brazil and remote areas of Paraguay between 1900 and 1935.